Our thanks to Canadian Friends of Peace Now for permitting TTN to post the following:
Israel’s premier peace movement, Shalom Achshav (Peace Now) has been working non-stop in recent weeks to fight back against the Jewish supremacist and annexationist agenda of the Netanyahu government.
One important victory involved a property in an East Jerusalem neighbourhood where settlers, supported by discriminatory government mechanisms, have for years been working to dispossess Palestinian residents and create settler enclaves.
Twenty years ago, a settler association took over the property of the family of former Attorney General Michael Ben Yair in Sheikh Jarrah, without the family’s knowledge. The settlers managed to collect hundreds of thousands of shekels in rent from the Palestinian residents who live in the house and planned to replace them with settlers. When the Ben Yair family learned of this, they began a fight for their home with the help of Peace Now, and about a month ago, the final verdict was given that returned the property to its rightful owners. The family intends to allow the Palestinian residents to continue living in their home for many years to come. The story, including Peace Now’s role, made the cover of an Haaretz weekend edition.
Hard-hitting reports
Since mid-December, Peace Now’s Settlement Watch (SW) program has published nine hard-hitting reports, detailing how the Israeli government is advancing settlement expansion at a greater rate than ever before. The expansion activity is enabled through complex bureaucratic mechanisms. Settlement Watch’s experts are adept at following all the convoluted administrative manoeuvres that serve the annexationist agenda. Peace Now’s work ensures that these actions are not cloaked in secrecy or occur entirely under the radar.
Two recent SW reports spotlight decisions to advance or promote a total of 2,650 new settler housing units in the West Bank – one plan for 1,211 units and a second for 1,439 units.
Another report sounds the alarm over a bill tabled by a Likud MK proposing that Israel formally annex 29 settlements with a total of 180,000 settlers and at least 119,00 dunams. The areas to be annexed would block territorial contiguity of a future Palestinian state. If the bill is passed, this would be a further insidious step towards establishing Israeli hegemony over the West Bank and preventing a two-state solution.
The push to annex the West Bank also occurs through illegal farms, dozens of which have been established in recent years, through which settlers take over vast areas, forcing out Palestinian shepherds or farmers and often harassing nearby Palestinian communities. Israeli authorities have allocated large tracts of land to Jewish settlers for grazing their herds. In the past, these allocations happened without the authorities making their decisions public. However, thanks to a Peace Now court case, won in December 2024, the state now does have to publish in advance any decision to allocate land outside of settlements. The advance publication makes it a bit easier to raise objections to and mobilize against the plans.
Solidarity mission to Masafer Yatta
Peace Now also engages in direct action to resist annexation and support Palestinians under threat. On February 14, Shalom Achshav activists joined with those of seven civil rights and anti-occupation organizations to support Palestinians in the beleaguered communities of Masafer Yatta. For years these communities have been under severe pressure – undergoing home demolitions, evictions and harassment – from Israeli authorities and settlers. Their plight and resistance are the subject of the Oscar-award winning documentary No Other Land. [Discussed in this TTN post.]
The mid-February initiative saw dozens of Israeli activists travel to Masafer Yatta to plant olive trees in solidarity with Palestinians. The volunteers from Tel Aviv were able to get through but those from Haifa and Jerusalem were blocked by Israeli police. At the end of the solidarity action, some of the volunteers were taken into police custody for questioning – clearly a harassment exercise by the police. One of those interrogated was Settlement Watch co-director Hagit Ofran, who happened to have a broken leg and was on crutches but who did not let that stop her from joining the mission to support Masefer Yatta. [Above photos courtesy of Shalom Achshav.]